January Wedding
by thewordsthatweareneeding
Summary: Based on the song January Wedding by The Avett Brothers, this story follows the progression of the relationship between Remus Lupin and Dorcas Meadowes over the course of the First War. Don't be deceived by the title; it's not at all about a wedding.


**A/N: I acknowledge that there's a great deal of head canon behind this, so I ask just that you keep an open mind. I do support the concept of Remus/Dorcas, but I seem to have a different perception of it than most. The lyrics to the song this is based off of are included in italics.**

_She keeps it simple_

_And I am thankful for her kind of lovin'_

_'__Cause it's simple_

All of the hiccups in the road, the fights and misunderstandings and insecurites, all of it smooths itself out by the time they graduate. The feelings were still there of course. Not even the sudden induction into adulthood could completely rid Dorcas of her hesitance and her aversion to conflict, nor could it cure Remus' doubt or the inevitable way his self loathing would creep up and overcome him for stretches of time when no one but Sirius or Lily could pull him out of it again. But the dark clouds that hung over them seemed to eclipse all the triviality, so that at least if the bumps were there, they'd learned to keep their eyes on the road ahead and pretend they hadn't felt them. Sometimes he loves her for letting them pretend it's that simple. Sometimes it's purely her silence that keeps him believing it at night when everything is silent and he hears the screams of people he had once known instead of the sound of her laughter, when he closes his eyes and sees the full moon instead of her smile, when he lies awake for hours trying not to think until he passes out and then the sun is up and her hand is on his arm, her voice pulling him away from one nightmare so that he can face another.

_No longer do we wonder if we're together_  
_We're way past that_  
_And I've already asked her_  
_So in January we're gettin' married_

Sometimes they get sent out together, usually when their job is to pick up the pieces of something rather than to hold it together. Dorcas picks up the information from Dumbledore and Remus meets her at the front together so that they can apparate to their destination hand in hand. They never leave the scene hand in hand, but if either of them notice, they store the information away as yet another subject they can't bring themselves to breach.

On a few occasions, when Remus is passing out blankets to shell-shocked victims or Dorcas is consoling a crying stranger, one of them will get asked a question. A curious child, a nosy woman, a knowing old man- always someone- will ask, "So are you two…?" always trailing off, waiting for them to finish the sentence. When Dorcas is asked she smiles and says yes, as if that were all the answer they were looking for. When Remus is asked, he glances over his shoulder at her, clears his throat, and changes the subject.

_She's talkin' to me with her voice _  
_Down so low I barely hear her_  
_But I know what she's sayin'_  
_I understand because my heart and hers are the same_  
_And in January we're gettin' married_

Some nights, they both crawl back to the apartment they share at different hours of the night and collapse into bed together, too tired to even fall asleep. Those times are a rare instance when silence is the most dangerous, leaving a gaping emptiness that the dark clouds could force their way into, a great hulking elephant in their room that shoves its way between them in their bed, too monstrous to attempt to reach over to hold each other. When they feel the floor beneath them shake and every tick of the clock sounds like a footstep, one of them lets out a tentative whisper. If the other manages to find their voice, they stay up and talk, trying to conquer the silence with meaningless talk about the weather or Benjy Fenwick's new haircut or a memory they once shared.

Even in the quiet desperation that looms over them, they do not break their unspoken agreement not to talk of the war. In their worst moments, Dorcas turns away from him to lie on her back so that Remus can pretend he doesn't see her crying, because any attempt to comfort her would come out sounding something like _I'm scared, what are we going to do, how is it ever going to be okay._ Then his hand finds hers and squeezes it gently, and the sob she lets out is so soft he can pretend it was a laugh, and that while they're both thinking of the future, they're thinking of each other and their friends and days so sunny that fog is memory so distant it may have been a lie all along.

_I hope that I don't sound too insane when I say_  
_There is darkness all around us_  
_I don't feel weak but I do need sometimes for her to protect me_  
_And reconnect me to the beauty that I'm missin'_  
_And in January we're gettin' married_

It makes him sick to see her coming home with dirt smudged on her cheeks and dark, hollow eyes. If he admitted that to anyone else, they would have told him just to be happy she came home at all, but that is one thing that isn't so simple. Because for so many years, when he heard the name "Dorcas" he would think of a quiet little girl smiling at him in a hallway where everyone else was trying to shove past, and now his first thought was of the feeling in his stomach when her parents had died and he'd stood next to her as she cried, when there was nothing he could say and nothing he could do and nothing would ever make it okay that someone so good would have to go through something so terrible.

When it came to Dorcas, he'd never wanted anything more than to protect her, to keep the loving, kind girl from ever knowing what real hatred and real hurt felt like. He had wanted to protect her the same way that a child afraid of the dark might tiptoe around a candle for fear of causing it to go out. She had been like a candle to him when they'd begun spending time together, keeping his thoughts from turning dark even as she'd reminded him of innocence and happiness and everything that defined someone as human and everything he feared he'd lost. But with each night she came home bloody he felt more sure she was starting to burn out, and then there would be no way to deny the darkness any longer.

_No longer does it matter what circumstances we were born in_  
_She knows which birds are singin' _  
_And the names of the trees where they're performin' in the mornin_  
_And in January we're gettin' married_  
_Come January let's get married_

By the time she's killed, they've stopped talking entirely. Since the night Marlene had died, small talk had ceased sufficing to stave off Dorcas' demons, and he'd grown incapable of facing the fear in her eyes every time she looked at him. For too many weeks it had been a question of who they were, rather than who they were to each other, and soon when he told her he loved her all he could think of was how many people he would never get a chance to say it to again, and how few people were left to say it to her, rather than how it felt when she said it back. If she said it back.

But when he sees her body it stops mattering that they haven't actually been themselves for years. Because at one point they had been the people they'd thought each other to be, and they had loved each other. And maybe he'd never actually stopped meaning it when he told her he loved her, maybe it had only felt different because she was so changed from the girl she'd been when he'd first said it. In his memories she was the same.

When he looked back on the time they spent together, he didn't think of the times he'd held her hand and wondered how she didn't see claws in the place of his fingers and scream to be released. Rather, he felt her head on his shoulder as they danced, tasted the lukewarm tea she'd left waiting for him on the mornings she'd had to leave before he woke up, heard her voice whispering so softly in his ear it might have been the voice in his head, "Do you remember when you bought me that package of Every Flavor Beans, and every single one of them turned out to be bogey flavored?"

And some nights, when he sat alone in his new apartment, he would close his eyes and see her all in white, walking towards him with Marlene on her arm and Lily a step behind as he stood next to James and Peter, waiting with a smile on his face under a full moon that everyone disregarded in a different life. A better life, maybe.


End file.
